Review 5517: Owner, Parmentier Apartment (#54936)

When

Location

City Apartment - fantastic location within walking distance of the Marais quarter of Paris.

Nearby Amenities

Lots of shops and restaurants nearby.

The House/Apartment

Typical Parisian apartment building overlooking central courtyard.

Garden

No outside sitting area.

Furnishings/Cleanliness/Living Areas

The furniture was fine for a rental and the apartment was clean on the surface.

Bedrooms/Bathrooms

The bedrooms were fine, there were two bathrooms though not in the arrangement described on the website. The "en-suite" had a bath and basin but no water closet (WC). This was located off the hall. If there were people using the sofabed in the living room one would have had to walk through to use the WC.

Kitchen

The kitchen was usable but understocked in terms of cutlery. Barely enough to go round for four of us let alone if there had been the six people that the apartment was supposed to cater for. One dishwasher tablet was provided for the three nights that we were there so only able to use the dishwasher once or pay for a whole box of detergent. Ditto for the washing machine - no detergent provided. The dining table was also quite small for six people with wobbly legs!

Problems or Bonuses

The apartment was quite noisy as all windows overlooked the central courtyard which echoed whenever anyone spoke/walked across it or opened the bins. We were woken one night at 2am to the sound of authentic Parisian night time noises!

Also the condensing combi-boiler which was located in the kitchen made constant noise, so much so that my 13 yr old son asked whether there was a carbon monoxide alarm (there wasn't).

Agency and Representatives (and price)

The owners of this apartment live in the UK and there is no one in Paris to deal with issues bar the cleaner who we were told is hard to get hold of. This also means that there is nobody to check the property before you leave. Payment was not accepted by PayPal and we paid by sending international banker's drafts to the owners in the UK. When it came to returning the deposit it has taken eight weeks and 20 emails until the money is safely back in our account. We were palmed off with a series of excuses until finally after six weeks it transpired that our draft had been lost and we have now managed to get our bank to refund us the amount. No apologies have been forthcoming from the property owners and in fact they now claim that they do not accept bankers drafts as payment despite the fact that the draft for rental was cashed.

Do you recommend this vacation rental to others?

The apartment is pleasant enough and the location is great but the experience of getting our deposit back left a nasty taste and therefore I cannot recommend this property.

Things to do in this area

Rue Oberkampf was nearby which is a very lively street with lots of lovely food shops and restaurants - I would definitely recommend staying near here as it was great fun.

This review is the opinion of a Slow Travel member and not of slowtrav.com.